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Yes, they used the early Etrex, I have one too and it is easy to do. Good to hear about Steffen. I previously got the impression he was a bit miffed about it and his Wikipedia page certainly remembers. Funny it all happened at a place called Bumpass. It was a Bum Pass. 😂
That's about right.
Funnily enough, I met Steffen a few months later before the start of indypac, and the TABR came up. He was pretty cool about it. Also there was a woman called Vasiliki who is a friend of his from Greece (he lives there)and she is also a good rider, has done tcr,etc.
One morning, in the middle of Australia, about 5am, I was riding along the road, still dark, virtually zero traffic, and I see a cyclist coming towards me. I shouted hello. A couple of hours later I got to the next road house and met her there.
Turns out she had got to the road house the first time the evening before, bivvied there, then left and gone the wrong way, and ridden 50km back, and didn't realise until she saw me. She was pretty upset, lost a few places. But Steffen is not the only person to have done it.
I didn't get into the details of how it happened with either of them but I assume they must have their GPS set to direction of travel at the top. I always have mine with North at the top so, while I might make other errors, I shouldn't make the major one of going completely the wrong direction.
Even so, always worth checking other stuff after you set off: where is the moon, which way is the wind coming from, etc, to make sure it ties in with what you expect.